Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 5/11/2000
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 5/11/2000; 7:11:28 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 5/11/2000 Msg #: 17199 Prev/Next: 17198 / 17200
Flames in New Mexico
Garret Vreeland: "180 homes gone. 8700 plus acres burned. Fires are separated, one near White Rock, one in West Espanola, two around Los Alamos. supposedly the fire came within 30 yards of a nuclear materials housing bunker. They've pulled firefighters away again because of the high winds, and the swift changes of direction."
Reuters: "A huge forest fire threatens the Los Alamos."
MSNBC: 100-plus Los Alamos homes burn.
A flame for the music industry
Technology made their huge concentration of money possible. Without technology all entertainment would happen around a communal campfire, people telling stories, group singing, stuff like that. (Doesn't sound too bad does it?)
Anyway, back to my rant.
So now technology wants to go somewhere else, and no doubt there will be ways to make huge amounts of money with the new stuff, but not in the same ways as you did with the old stuff. So what do the people with all the money do? What they always do. They hire lawyers and try to tie up the technology so they can keep making money with the old technology.
Now it's fashionable to say that eventually the technology will will win, and probably it will, but in the meantime what could be a lovely explosion of creativity is proving to be a fud-filled shitstorm of lawsuits and capitulation.
So dear music company execs. Will we ever be able to bond the Web and music? If I want to play a tune for my readers now, how will that work? We've been waiting to hear from you for quite some time. Why not offer us a way to pay you money using the new technology? Hello, anyone home?
Microsoft and Slashdot
Speaking of fud-filled shitstorms..
Salon: Embrace, extend, censor. "On Wednesday, lawyers representing Microsoft requested the removal of a series of posts on the bulletin boards at Slashdot, the popular 'news for nerds' Web site."
Captain Cursor
Taylor tries an experiment in bi-directional linking. Read through the whole section, it's interesting.
BTW, it's a free service of Weblogs.Com. You can search for a pointer and see all the weblogs that are pointing to it. Just a side-effect of having all the current source text for all the weblogs in a database.
Kate and Susan
Susan Kitchens is back with pics from Panama.
Kate Adams: Backyard from Hell.
MORE and Mac OS 9
Outliners DG: "MORE and OS9 are not a great mix. You'll get a few crashes and few instances, when changing to MORE from another program of the MORE window not updating. The other program's window acts like it is pasted to the window."
MORE finally met a Mac OS it didn't like?
Doc Searls and MORE
Doc came over for a visit yesterday afternoon.
We talked for a long time, and did a brief demo of Pike. There were problems with the demo, but I got a note from him last night that he now has it working on his system, and is using it to write for his weblog, which we're going to transition to a new shell designed by Mike Donnelan.
The demo was too short. I wanted to show Doc how I use Pike to edit Scripting News as an outline, but at 2PM it was just a flat list, I hadn't organized it for the 10PM email distribution (which is turning into my daily deadline).
So Doc if you're reading this here's a screen shot of Scripting News right now. See how it works just like MORE? It even has rules.
BTW, when I show MORE users how Pike does rules, they always grin from ear to ear. To Doc I said yesterday, "MORE users dig rules, and so do MORE developers."
I told Doc about a domain we recently registered, opinioneer.com. I didn't have to explain to him that it was the intersection between opinions and engineering, with a hint of pioneer thrown in. People say all the good domain names are taken. In my experience none of the good ones are taken.
Apple's WWDC
Next week is Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, or WWDC, in San Jose CA. Two related weblogs, one for Mac OS X, run by four editors, Jim Roepcke, Daniel Berlinger, James Spahr and Wes Felter (wow what a team!); and one specifically for WWDC, run by a group of three editors.
In 1996 I tried to start something like a weblog for WWDC. It didn't happen then, glad it's happening now. Excellent.
John Norstad's 1997 WWDC trip report.
Dave Polaschek wrote WWDC trip reports in 1998 and 1999.
Developers and platform vendors
I did my part at WWDCs, for many years. Now it's time for a new generation to work with Apple. Let's hope for the best, a great new OS, not too much hype, and kindness to developers and users.
Another POV, and perhaps some good advice. Show kindness to Apple too. Try to understand the realities they live with before you too harshly judge their results. Remember that they are individuals, and bond with them, understand that they are not "Apple". You can't actually talk to "Apple". Apple is a funny name for a computer company.
Another observation about developer programs. If you want to be taken seriously by the platform vendor you have to show committment. "I might develop for your platform if you do this," is a no op. The way it seems to work is that you have to put in a lot of skin before you get respect back. The platform vendor isn't with you when you're working around their bugs, or watching your toy boat sink in the wake of their battleship. When you tell them that they're fucking you they tune out. ("I already know it sucks, why won't this guy leave me alone!") They don't get it, and they can't, because they've got their own view of things, to them the battleship isn't that big, and doesn't belong to them. Remember, "it's even worse than it appears," and you won't be disappointed.
I got a new POV on this in the early days of SOAP. When I showed up at Microsoft, there was Don Box. When a new team took over SOAP, there was Don Box. Again and again. Although I'm not inside the COM world, my sense is that Don is the #1 COM developer as far as Microsoft is concerned. And that's not because he kisses ass (although I'm sure he's adept at MS politics), nor due to his brilliance or that he lives for wire protocols. I think the most important thing is his committment to work with Microsoft. Take the good with the bad, try not to take things personally. And when they ask you to come back, you show up.
5/13/98: "One of the things I used to admire about Microsoft is a philosophy called BOGU, which stood for Bend Over and Grease Up. It was a reminder that they would take it up the butt for the bigger prize."
BTW, I wrote that scathing piece about Microsoft after we started the SOAP project. What a difference a two year perspective makes. They put up with a lot of shit from me, and never complain. (At least not that I hear about.) Wow. (OTOH, if they had bent a little more to my POV, we'd be further along now. NBD.)
SOAP, Zope, and XML-RPC
Pike and Zope sittin in a tree.. Happy day!
Microsoft's briefing day for NGWS is June 1.
Much celebration in the land of Firewalls with Piking Sauce.
Send me your SOAP news. The SOAP weblog gets good hits. Spread the love. Let me know what you're doing with SOAP and I'll let the world know.
Lots of great links and stories on StackFrame.
Good news, Microsoft didn't actually invent XML. ";->"
Riddle
Question, when you mix Pike and Zope, what do you get?
"The pope"
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